Filed under: Unisubversity
Today, my tutor read through the draft of my first assignment.
As I sat on the other side of the desk, clutching my bag in clammy, nervous hands, trying to distract myself from the clicks of her tongue and shaking of her head by wondering if professors stick their gum under the table when no one is looking; and should I, subtly, suddenly hang myself upside down off the edge of the cheap, chipped, federally funded wood and took a quick look underneath, if, there, I would find an abstact blob of Hubba Bubba Grape Gum. Of course, in my imagination the blob looked like a Rabbit Vibrator smashed to pieces surrounded by a spreading pool of silicone lube. But that’s just me.
Anyway. Suffice to say, I was distracted.
So much so, that for whole seconds I didn’t notice that she’d stopped reading and was now staring at me with a look of what can only be described as sheer pity.
She then got up from her grummy but non-gummy (under the benefit of the doubt clause) desk, rifled around with some papers on the nearby printer table, before returning to her desk, taking a moment to highlight what I assume was what she felt was a pertinent point.
She then handed back my assignment, along with the highlighted sheet.
I skimmed the page, and then looked back up at her.
“It seems like something you might be struggling with,” she helpfully pointed out, gesturing to the highlighted section. Helpful, of course, being a subjective term.
With that, I collected my things, thanked her for her time and closed the office door behind me.
Ten minutes later, congregating in the Uni bar with my editing group, one rather nosy fellow student asked me if I’d received any feedback. I said yes.
“What feedback?” She nudged. I told you, nosy.
“She highlighted something she thought I should work on,” I answered anyway, being the sharey, open person I am.
“What did she highlight?” Still nosy, apparently.
I hesitated before answering, knowing that soon my secret failing, my hidden flaw would be laid out for the world and all its inhabitants to see. Would they never again worship me for my genius and perfection as they had so quickly become accustomed? I took a breath before resignedly replying, “She said I needed to work on keeping within the word limit, apparently it’s something I have trouble with.”
The nosy one looked over at me, lifted her flat beer to lips and took a sip before saying, “Well, duh.”
Filed under: Assign Of The Times
Participation – Observation is the name of this first exercise in torture of my class Professional and Creative Communication.
The particulars include visiting a building/construction/renovating site at least twice, anything from a new strip mall, to the painting of a window sill, and noting down the social/cultural implications and interactions therein.
Me being, well, me, I was lazy, I picked my back yard. What? It’s a whole 14 steps from my bedroom. I counted.
This is my first of ,what my lecturer has promised to be, many, many drafts.
Editing is the name of the game, ladies and gentlemen. And, apparently, I’m its bitch.
~*~
Every day, like clockwork, the incessant chatting of the radio talk show hosts spilling from the speakers of the small portable radio comes to a sudden halt somewhere between 5:35 and 5:40pm; regardless of how emphatic the guest speaker is at being allowed to finish his point before he is unceremoniously turned off. The sound of a car door opening, followed by the garage roller door being pulled up and curling into a coil of sheet metal signals the return of the neighbour from his eight hour day at work, and tells the builder in my back yard that it’s time to give the neighbouring houses’ inhabitants some quiet time in their evening.
He calls out to his young apprentice who, whether be pushing along a wheel barrow or balancing on a steel joist in mid air, appears to long be awaiting “knock off time”. Quietly and efficiently they gather up their tools, yell a quick “see ya tomorrow” to me through the kitchen window, and make their way out to their Ute thoughtfully parked on the street to allow me access to my driveway.
Sometimes, on days the job is too large for the two person team, or too specialised, a third, or sometimes, fourth, is called in. Sometimes they are just an extra hand to help carry out the excess debris, and sometimes, an expert in his field is required to polish the newly dried cement until it shimmers like a sheet of opaque grey glass. Either way, there is never any doubt on who is in charge. It seems every detail is talked through with the main contractor, and the decision, whether unanimous, or an obvious issue of contention, is his. An understanding that is demonstrated by a phrase that is often overheard drifting through the open windows into my home office, “I’ll take responsibility for it, mate”, his signal that the period for discussion has come to an end, and it is time to get on with the job.
The attention to safety practices seems as though it is the top priority, the ground on the site, immaculate despite the high volume of tools and machinery that are used interchangeably throughout a working day. Tool cabinets on wheels, pushed close to the area being worked on, and then, tidily, back against the wall as everything is shut down for the day, illustrate the contractor’s tight rein on keeping his working space organised, as does his frustration when he calls out asking for an implement that isn’t where it should be.
His work area isn’t the only place that appears to be under a regime of extreme organisation. Despite having a mobile hands free kit attached permanently to his right ear, phone call lengths are kept to an absolute minimum. His business, broadly advertised, such as on the side of his truck and equipment, invite calls throughout the day, but are answered with a polite, yet firm request for a phone number and a promise that he will return their call at either lunchtime or an appropriate time later in the evening. “Gotta concentrate at the job at hand first,” he yells over to his young charge, the beneficiary of such little lessons dotted throughout the day.
Nosy neighbours, desperate to be a part of the construction happening so close to their home, never fail to find a reason to poke their heads over the fence, pointing out a discrepancy in the height of the new roof, or the colour of the walls; accusations the contractor simply smiles at, while, almost by way of a challenge, offering them a viewing of the building designs approved by the council. A wink to me as I inevitably poke my head out the backdoor to stick my own nose in at the little scuffle, reassures me, as he goes about his work, throwing a parting shot into the wind, “Don’t worry, love, I’ll be buildin’ you a good fence, they do make good neighbours after all.”
I return to my office, reassured by the sound of the circular saw in the background that, while, I might not know the rules and tricks of this game of home renovation, my house is in the safe, hairy, calloused hands of someone who does.
Filed under: Unisubversity
Upon writing this I have now returned to daily life on the lean mean streets of University learnin’ for one long, painful, event filled week.
As you may know, I have long been chasing the, somewhat elusive, dream of completing my doctorate in a field that I have absolutely no intention of working in. As the result of some misled decision making of mine in my (very) early twenties, I decided that science was where my genius was going to come into light. Make no mistake (as I obviously did in making this decision) the decision to major and bury my academic energy into science, namely, Physiology, was not easily come by.
For the first 12 years of my schooling life, it had been a general understanding that all I would need is good grades to get into the University course of choice, being Medicine. Now, me being the undiscovered academic savant of the 21st century, this wasn’t considered too much of a hurdle. However, the year before I began university, they decided to change the admission criteria, which, to this day, I’m unshakeable in my belief that this was a personal conspiracy against me. Firstly, it was stipulated that everyone would have to sit a three hour exam testing every angle of your brain. Secondly, those who survived the first round of herd thinning were subjected to a torturous round of interviews. Suffice to say, the panel were made of bigoted/racist/ageist/smartist/narrowminded/nepotistic snobs…who had been trained since birth to ask the most irrelevant questions to eventually choose a group of 70 from thousands of applicatns. Adding insult to injury, it was decided that taking grades into consideration were no longer an important part of the decision making process as they decreased the cut off score to a piddling 90 out of a possible 100!
*wanders off in a senseless rant about the inhumane practises of university admission officers*
*clears throat*
Anyway, the medical field obviously felt that my genius would be of better use in a different area. Despite this crippling setback, I knew I had greatness ahead of me that was awaiting me to grow out of my boy obsessed teen years.
So, I began my, what would prove to be a never ending, university career life in the corpse ridden (and I don’t mean just the subject matter, but also the professors) world of forensic science, with the lofty dream of delving into the minds of criminals to solve every crime that was even committed. My inspiration came in the form of a Reader’s Digest article, I’m afraid to admit, and have previously felt free to keep to myself, where a heinous crime was solved via the genius of a profiler who’s attention to detail led to the capture of the murderer. Attention to detail, that was totally me to a T, I thought, I’m the queen of “Spot the Difference” games after all, right? I envisaged crime journals and TV interviews galore in my future, breakfasting with Katie Couric as she worshipped the coffee cup I drank out of as I humbly described how I’d solved the death of Kurt Cobain telling of how I knew I was destined for a life as a celebrity forensic psychologist when I guessed it was Maggie who’d shot Mr Burns. And this was all pre-CSI, but who knew some dude with a beard who’s name had to be a play off the word “gruesome” would steal my thunder, but, never mind, it was a mere 5 months before I was un-enrolled in Forensic and became a student of the School of Psychology.
Here’s what I learned in 18 months of studying Psychology: Psychologists must truly suck at persuading the powers that be in charge of the University piggy bank for funding. Considering the amount of students enrolled in Psychology you’d think they’d get a bigger piece of the money tree pie. In fact, I often wondered why the competition for psychologists wasn’t greater in my city, rather than the current situation, which was a gross lack of counseling professionals. The answer came during a lecture late one Wednesday afternoon. I was woken from my nap by the sound of part of the antiquated ceiling crumbling to the ground and the lecturer yelping in…something, not quite fear nor surprise, but more like annoyance at being interrupted from his droning on about…something, wha? I was napping! Anyway, his yelp of something was quickly followed by a group of men rushing in, wearing, what I can only describe as, Hazmat suits. Taking a quick look at the hole in the ceiling, and the suspicious white dust rising from the pile of debris on the ground, those awake among us were ushered from the lecture theatre, then herded into a nearby room, where, in hushed tones, we were “jokingly” requested to not mention the world crumbling down around our ears to anyone else. I am not joking when I say “jokingly”, it was very important, the hushed “joking” voice told us, that he was of course “joking” when he told us “jokingly” not to tell anyone, because, of course there would be no need to try to cover up our close encounter with death…and no one need be afraid that the white dust was asbestos. That would be the point when he said he was “joking”.
And yet, even knowing that half my class would be dead from contracting mysterious respiratory diseases before the end of the year, leaving me, upon graduating, my very own corner in the niche market of obsessive compulsive psychology (study what you know, after all), my interest in all things Freudian slipped; I crossed the road over to the medical science building and enrolled myself into Biochemistry, where I figured I had better chances with whatever mass murdering concoction the 2nd year molecular biologists were coming up with.
Two very unfortunate biochemistry pub crawl one night stands later, I was a university major orphan once again.
One after another, my majors fell like beer bottles off the wall at my feet until one sunny November day, when my guidance counselor gave me a shake of the head to go with the shake of my shoulders, as she emphasized her desperation, pleading with me, “will you just stick with a goddamn major!”.
Sheesh, I told her, all you had to do was ask.
And I did.
Fast forward 8 years later, one double degree, one failed business, 3 years and counting, working in an area of which I previously had no interest nor experience, and 2 years of my doctorate under my belt, I’m back pounding the hallowed hallways of University. My doctorate deferred for a year while I go try to “find” myself, my work taking up more time than ever and paying less, last Tuesday, I sat in a class room and was assigned homework. A class, I might, whose title I don’t even understand, I mean Communication: Rhetoric and Reasoning? To anyone who knows me, does that sound like that a class I have any chance of passing?
And this, this is my note, to get out of having to do it.
Why?
Because I’m the oldest person in my class, and I’ll cry “I don’t wanna do it” if I want to.
Who ever it was who’d stood on his soap box and demanded give him liberty or give him death, must’ve never undertaken an arts degree. Liberty! I’ll settle for 8 hour practicals four days a week like in the good ol’ days of my science degrees. Give me the toxic fumes, give me the diseased mice, the unexplained explosions and walking around with no eyebrows. Just don’t make me sit in another classroom having my feeble attempts at writing critiqued by 18 year olds in ugg boots. And as part of this class who’s name doesn’t include any words I’m familiar with, I have to keep a daily journal, of anything that pops up into my head, apparently.
And this, appears to be it.
This is my first entry.
I told you. This class is sneaky, even in my attempt to try to get out of doing the homework, I’ve inadvertently done the homework.
Harumph.
I’ll show them.
I’m gonna communicate my reasonable rhetorical ass off.
